As far as I'm aware, the Geforce FX is a completely different beast altogether.
Hugely programmable, and extremely different architechture from previous tech.
Hence, a lot of today's games run about on par with a 9700 Pro.
But a lot of people are banging on about AA + AF, a feature that not everyone uses. And it's here that the 9700 shines, but the FX doesn't. And thats where it's getting slated, which is a shame.
A lot people don't understand technology, and because today's games aren't running well, they jump on the NVidia bashing wagon without fully understanding just what they are on about.
Personally, I see it as a step for the future where NVidia will dominate, as they have been brave and done something very different.
The cooling is loud, but not the levels that some have reported.
Ever heard a CPU Delta fan spinning at around 5 - 6000 rpm ?
Then you'll get the picture. It's fairly loud, but not too distracting.
The NV35, is NVidia's fight against ATI. This has better cooling, a 256 bit memory bus, better AA, and so far is about 2x the speed of the FX.
Perhaps the FX was Nvidia's 'Test', to try out the .13 move from .15 to see if it was mature enough (not enough for the FX, hence the shortage). And to see how this new tech runs.
Athlon 64 3000+ stock
MSI NForce 4 K8N Neo Platinum
2Gb RAM
nVidia Geforce 6800GT stock clocks
SBLive! Platinum + Audigy ZS2 Drivers
WinXP Pro SP2